Miena A.R., known online as mienar, has been captivating her followers for years. Her animated illustrations share a common thread: an attention to environments. Characters aren’t the main subject here — rooms, kitchens, forests, corners of houses crossed by the smallest of movements, like a curtain shifting, rain running down a window, leaves trembling in the wind. It’s from these details that her visual language is born, made of looping animated illustrations designed to pull us into hundreds of different places.

Mienar began sharing her work online on Tumblr in January 2018, though her relationship with drawing goes back further, to 2013. She is a self-taught artist, learning everything she knows through YouTube tutorials, forums and industry blogs.

A thematic thread runs through much of her work, and she herself defines it in two words: “breathlessness” and “calmness,” that feeling of being out of breath alongside stillness. Rain and swaying plants recur often in her GIFs, elements that bring the image to life without breaking its quiet. It’s a difficult balance to strike, making an image move without stripping it of its contemplative stillness, and it’s probably the most recognisable trait of her style.

In recent years mienar has started expanding into longer formats. Golden Hour, her first animated short film, was made during a month-long break she gave herself specifically to study more efficient animation techniques, new colour palettes and sound design. The result is a plotless journey into a hidden place in the woods. There’s no story to follow, only an environment to move through — exactly the territory she’s always worked in.